PARIS — The U.S. mixed 4×400-meter relay team set a world track record Friday, bolstered by a blazing second leg from Chicago’s Shamier Little.
The U.S. team — consisting of Vernon Norwood, Little, Bryce Deadmon and Kaylyn Brown — crossed the finish line in 3:07.41 during its preliminary heat, beating the previous record by more than a second.
The French team finished in second place, more than three seconds behind the United States. Belgium was third. The mixed relay, which made its debut at the Tokyo Games in 2021, consists of teams with two women and two men.
After the race, the American quartet acknowledged that they were aware of the old record — set by another U.S. team last year — and that they had talked about it as a group. They didn’t prioritize it during the preliminary round, choosing to focus instead on clean handoffs and not dropping the baton.
If anything, they thought, the record will fall in the finals Saturday night.
“I always knew we were going to run fast,” Little said. “We talked about, you know, it’s going to take a record to win a medal, but it took a record to win our prelim.”
The United States led each leg, besting a fast field in which four national records were broken. It was Little, however, who widened the gap and gave the Americans a full-second cushion over a French team being pushed by a raucous partisan crowd.
“I was running down the back stretch in the last curve and I was, like, ‘Damn, it’s kind of loud in here.’” Deadmon said. “That was exciting.”
Little, whose hair was dyed purple to match the Olympic track, had hoped to compete here in the 400-meter hurdles, but finished fourth at the Olympic trials earlier this summer. She was selected as a relay athlete in July.
A graduate of Lindblom Math and Science Academy on the South Side, Little was an Illinois track superstar who won eight state titles during high school. As a junior she won three events at the state track championships and finished second in a fourth to single-handedly give the school its first state team trophy in any sport since 1955.
She attended Texas A&M, where she was a three-time national champion in 400-meter hurdles. As a college sophomore, she won gold at the Pan-American Games and took silver in the hurdles at the 2015 world championships.
Despite her success at the international level, she has struggled in the U.S. Olympic trials and never competed in a Summer Games.
So, it was easy to understand the wonderment on her face as she watched a replay of the race on the giant stadium screen. Her eyes grew wide, her mouth gaped and then broke into a wide grin.
“That was just excitement at seeing how we put that together,” she said.
The U.S. relay team will be the heavy favorites when they compete for a medal Saturday night in the Stade de France. The United States can make one substitution to the lineup in that final race, but every athlete who competed Friday would receive a medal if the team finishes in the top three.
“Our job was just to come out and execute,” Deadmon said. “And tomorrow we hope we do it again.”
